


Trying to Survive

by Raine_Wynd



Series: PPDC Photo Album [4]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Missing Scene, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Revised Version, Slice of Life, snapshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-26 18:16:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3859819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raine_Wynd/pseuds/Raine_Wynd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snapshot: Raleigh at the Wall of Life, a few years after Knifehead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trying to Survive

He’s not so desperate that he’ll trade his body for food and shelter. Raleigh may be a lot of things, but he’s got his pride, and he’s never had to barter like that. Not even during those horrible months when he and Yancy were hiding the fact that their lone living parent had taken off rather than deal with them. They had almost starved before Yancy figured out how to pick the lock on the steel safe bolted to the floor of the master bedroom closet and found the cash. It sticks in Raleigh’s craw, though, that the only job that doesn’t seem to care who he is is the one that can’t possibly stand up against a rampaging kaiju. (He’s fought the damn things; felt their impact against Gipsy’s hull, screamed in pain when Knifehead tore his - Gipsy’s - arm.) He knows they’re not using the same steel that they made jaegers out of; he’s heard the more experienced workers talking, comparing how it breaks more readily than the first stuff they got. It’s harder to weld in the Alaskan cold, too, and that can’t be good. He knows enough about construction, two and a half years after Knifehead, to know how the temperature changes affect the steel. If a kaiju ever came this far north, they’re screwed.

He says nothing, however. He doesn’t want to be the guy pointing fingers. He knows people see him as the ex-jaeger pilot who ran away. They don't know he didn't want to stick around and find out what they do to guys like him, who disobey orders and get their brother and co-pilot killed in mid-Drift. He hears the too-loud whispers of recognition, even though he pretends otherwise. He quit getting into fights over it because it just didn’t matter anymore. All he wants to do is silence the echoes in his head, get something to eat, and have someplace warm to sleep. He's just another guy trying to survive in a world on the brink of apocalypse. On top of the Wall of Life, no one cares who he is as long as he doesn't fall off and does his job. 

Still, the wind seeps in through the PPDC-issue coat and the now worn gloves, and Raleigh doesn't think he'll ever be warm again. If a kaiju were to come as he welds yet another girder in place, he'd die. Some part of him welcomes that outcome. Some part of him - the part of him that was Yancy he thinks - stubbornly refuses to believe that will be his fate.


End file.
